


The Words Between Us Left Unsaid

by imalright



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Crimson Flower Spoilers, M/M, Post-CF, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imalright/pseuds/imalright
Summary: It’s selfish of me, I know. It’s selfish of me to send this in a letter, and it’s cowardly of me to shy from your gaze. News reaches me, even out here, so I know you’re well and I’m grateful for your health. My world would crumble without you in it.I’m sorry. Truly, deeply sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you behind. I’m sorry for breaking our promise, even after I begged you to keep it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.There are many truths I don’t care to put words to. Regrets, friends I failed, innocent people I could have saved and did nothing to defend. You know that. You’ve always known me.And I’ve always known you.I’m sorry.I love you.Over a decade after the events of Crimson Flower, Felix and Sylvain reunite.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 19
Kudos: 152
Collections: Sylvix Squad Super Stories





	The Words Between Us Left Unsaid

_ Dearest Sylvain, _

_ There are some things I need to say to you before I will ever rest easy. _

_ It’s selfish of me, I know. It’s selfish of me to send this in a letter, and it’s cowardly of me to shy from your gaze. News reaches me, even out here, so I know you’re well and I’m grateful for your health. My world would crumble without you in it. _

_ I’m sorry. Truly, deeply sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you behind. I’m sorry for breaking our promise, even after I begged you to keep it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. _

_ There are many truths I don’t care to put words to. Regrets, friends I failed, innocent people I could have saved and did nothing to defend. You know that. You’ve always known me. _

_ And I’ve always known you. _

_ I’m sorry. _

_ I love you. _

_ I’ve loved you for as long as I’ve known what love is. I’ve loved your warmth; you always shared it with an arm draped over my shoulder and your body leaning against my own. I never told you I cherished the contact, I only pushed you away. I’m sorry. _

_ I’ve loved for as long as I’ve had a heart. I’ve loved your caring soul; you’ve always put others before yourself, though that was stupid and somewhat selfish of you. I worried. I worry. But you were always better at caring than I was. I’m sorry. _

_ I’ve loved you for as long as I could hold your hand. I’ve loved all of you; the masks, the philandering, the slacking off, the way you hide your intelligence, the way you hide your pain, the way you fight, the way you smile, the way you run your hand through your hair when you were nervous, the way you check in after a difficult battle. The way you kiss and touch and give and take. The good and the bad. _

_ I miss you. Dearly. _

_ I wish I had told you before I ruined everything and let everyone down. _

_ Best, _

_ Felix _

Felix reads and rereads his letter. He’s never been illustrious with words, but he’s never tried to declare his love from a continent away, either. Fuck, it’s embarrassing that he’s getting better at this. 

Later, after the letter’s been rolled and tied, Felix sits cross-legged in front of a fire. Dancing in its flames he sees Dedue’s sacrifice and he sees his death. He sees Dimitri’s scars and he sees the boar scream for blood. He sees his father, scolding him one last time while dying in a puddle of his own blood. He sees Glenn’s mangled body, dead trying to defend Dimitri, a man who would later die at the hand of his army.

Acid coats his throat and covers his skin. The claws of his mistakes dig into his arms and legs and face and chest. He cries out to nobody, to the empty woods and the empty river.

He throws the letter into the fire and watches his life and heart turn to ash.

_ Elsewhere, wrapped in furs and blankets in an otherwise empty bed, Sylvain Gautier dreams of sweet words at midnight, of the dawn over the horizon where lost love peeks between the years of fresh growth through charred fallen trees, bones, and hearts. When he wakes hours later he feels a strange sense of melancholy, of nostalgia, feels the familiar hold of nimble fingers between his own that only exist in cherished memories. _

* * *

_ Dearest Sylvain, _

_ I’ve written so many letters. Forgive me for never sending any. _

_ If you’ve received this letter I can only assume I’m dead. I’m too cowardly to send it, too cowardly to know you’ve read the words written straight from my heart. You deserve better. I’m sorry. _

_ You deserve to know you’re loved. _

_ Not in the fake, pathetic, shallow way your parents loved you. Not in the friendly, kind way Ingrid and Mercedes loved you. Not in the way I won’t bother calling love the women you kept around loved you. _

_ You’re loved deeply. You’re loved for all that you are. You’re loved for your stubble in the morning, for your weirdly well moisturized hands, for the neat and orderly way you keep your things. For your real smile you shared only with your closest friends. For your kisses, both tender and ravenous, giving and greedy. For the kind way you encouraged Bernadetta to follow her dreams and become an author. For the forward way you tried to get Dimitri a girlfriend. For the dumbass way you tried to jump in front of an axe meant for me. _

_ I love you.  _

_ You deserve love. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to open your heart to the ones who want to truly love you. _

_ I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you myself. _

_ Best, _

_ Felix _

Felix crumples the letter in his hands. He flattens the paper. He crumples it again for good measure and folds it up to put in his pocket. His newest job might actually get him killed, and if he dies knowing Sylvain thinks he’s unloved… 

He cannot, under any circumstances, die with that knowledge. 

The job is horrid. He meets a man he knows to be Hilda’s brother. He neglects to mention he was there when Hilda died, and he did nothing to stop it. He doesn’t notice Felix choking on secrets through the violence, the blood and viscera, the near death encounters they fight back to back through.

He lives, because he doesn’t trust anyone else to deliver the letter.

He tears it up and leaves it at the base of a particularly broad tree, its branches reaching to cover those who need covering, taking in the sun and giving back life.

_ Elsewhere, at a council table with other leaders of Fódlan, Sylvain Gautier speaks of friendships forged in war, of lost love and sacrifices, of deep regret and failures. When he’s finished speaking the room gives polite applause and, when he seats himself, Bernadetta squeezes his arm meaningfully. The night draws to a close and when he feels the warm evening air he wonders if Felix still hates the cold. _

* * *

_ Dearest Sylvain, _

_ Seeing you again has made me the happiest I’ve been in a long time. I expected you to be angry, or cold. I expected you to have a wife and children. Selfishly, perhaps, I’m glad you don’t. _

_ I’m sorry. _

_ I’m sorry I’m selfish. I’m sorry I’m scared. I’m sorry I’m haunted. I’m sorry I’m cursed. I’m sorry I can’t say any of this to you, that I have to leave it in a letter or left unsaid. I fear if I speak to you, really speak to you, you won’t understand. Even worse, you might. _

_ I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you so hard, and for so long, that it physically aches to be apart and it physically aches to be near. Your laugh still makes my heart skip. The kindness in your eyes still fills me with joy. I want nothing more than to be with you, near you at all times, sharing your bed and showering you with love. But we both know I’m not capable, not deserving, and I can’t stand the thought of disappointing you. _

_ Perhaps I should tell you myself. Perhaps rejection would force me to move on. _

_ I don’t want to move on. _

_ You’ve always been my everything. My sun, my ground, my moon. You’re the tides that rise to consume me and recede, forcing me to chase you. You’re the steel in my blade. You’re my home. _

_ I have to leave. _

_ I can never know peace. I can never know love. _

_ You deserve peace and love. I don’t deserve you. You are loved, lovable, perfect. _

_ Goodbye, _

_ Felix _

This was such a bad decision.

Here he stands on Gautier land, surrounded by Gautier soldiers, led by none other than Sylvain Gautier, himself, hired to take care of some bandit problem that Sylvain definitely could have handled himself.

“C’mon, I hired you for a reason,” Sylvain says

“You’re perfectly capable of dealing with this,” Felix snaps, “I’m leaving.”

“No no no,” Sylvain grabs his arm, too hard at first but quickly relaxing into something more friendly. “No, Felix, I’m out of practice. I’ve been sitting on my ass doing paperwork for twelve years. You think anyone else can convince me to train like you do?”

Felix scowls. “Lazy asshole.”

Sylvain doesn’t mind.

Sylvain doesn’t mind Felix’s impassive fighting. He doesn’t mind the swift, efficient slicing of his blade, ringing through the air, tasting skin and muscle and blood and death. He doesn’t mind Felix’s face, splattered with blood. He doesn’t mind Felix’s apathetic acceptance to his invitation to stay awhile.

They return to the furthest thing from home Felix has ever known. But it’s Sylvain’s, now. It’s home, now.

They drink in front of the fire. They touch on the fur laid across the floor. They kiss with breath like wine. They don’t speak. They don’t ask questions. Sylvain loves his hair like this, long and soft. He loves Sylvain’s hair like this, tousled and unruly.

It’s the happiest he’s been in a long time. It scares him. He’s a killer, a beast, no better than the boar. Beasts don’t feel happiness.

Beasts don’t  _ deserve _ to feel happiness.

He performs. Sylvain is no beast. Sylvain, who spent so long denying himself meaningful happiness, deserves whatever will make him happy now. Felix can be that. Felix can be biting, acidic, he can be the Felix Sylvain remembers for a night.

He holds his guilt close to his chest.

Later, when he leaves the Gautier estate before Sylvain wakes, he stands in front of a small river running south just out of sight. It flows, just like time, just like life, all flowing with him near and with him far, far away. And it’ll continue flowing.

Sylvain’s life will move forward, and he’ll be chained down by the gravestones around his neck, just like the boar.

He drops the letter in the river and watches it float away.

_ Elsewhere and hours later, unbeknownst to Felix, Sylvain receives a soggy letter with running ink. He cries. He begs to nobody, to a ghost his men saw heading east with no real destination. When he mounts his horse to chase him down the footsteps fade away and, no matter how fast or how far he rides, he loses him. _

* * *

_ Dearest Sylvain, _

_ The letters I write you always start the same, and they always end in tatters and ash. And yet I write you again and again, wishing I had the courage to send even one. I write them and carry them for days, weeks, sometimes moons. I haven’t had one last a year yet. Perhaps this one will be different. _

_ I saw you mere moons ago. Before that it had been twelve years. It feels like a lifetime has passed, and yet no time at all. I can hear your voice so clearly, feel your warmth so openly. Some nights those memories keep me awake and sometimes they lull me to sleep. _

_ I should have told you I loved you those moons ago. _

_ I should have done many things. I shouldn’t have left without saying goodbye. I should— _

“Well, what do we have here?”

Felix nearly falls out of his seat. In his scramble to right himself (and hide his letter) he spills ink all over the sticky tavern table and all over his sleeve. He curses.

Sylvain whistles. “Some greeting.”

“What are you doing here?” Felix snaps.

“Oh, you know,” Sylvain throws himself in a seat across from Felix like this is some casual meeting for some casual occasion all casually, looking good as hell and warm and like love incarnated, “I heard you were in the area. Wanted to catch up. See how you’re doing.”

Felix stares, half in incredulity and half in awe at how well Sylvain wears his years. The asshole has a bit of a beard, laugh lines and crow’s feet carve a masterpiece into his face, telling stories of a lifetime filled with joy and pleasure. So why the  _ hell _ is he  _ here? _

“Aw, c’mon, I can’t catch up with an old friend?”

“You heard I was in the area,” Felix says blankly.

“Yep!”

“What area.”

“This area! The one we’re in right now.”

“Sylvain.”

“Hm?”

“We’re in what used to be southern Alliance territory.”

“Yep!”

“This is not where you live.”

“I didn’t say it’s where I live.”

Felix pinches the bridge of his nose. This was… not how he expected the evening to go. It’s not how he expected  _ any _ evening to go. His life is cold, lonely, it’s dirty and rough and everything Sylvain isn’t. Their lives don’t fit together. They can’t. So why are they crossing again?

“I  _ just _ got here,” Felix sighs exasperatedly, “How did you even know I was here?  _ I _ hardly know I’m here.”

“Lysithea told me.”

That explains how he  _ got _ here, but that’s not an answer.

“That’s not an answer,” Felix says.

“How is that not an answer? I knew you were here because Lysithea told me. It’s not complicated.”

“Okay, fine. How did  _ Lysithea _ know I was here?”

“She saw you.”

What.

Sylvain recognizes Felix’s surprise and elaborates, “We’re in what used to be  _ Ordelia _ territory, not just Alliance territory.”

“This is a small village, there’s no noble houses here, I checked.”

Sylvain shrugs. “Lysithea gave up her noble status years ago. Not that it matters, the whole system is being phased out. Remember? We fought a war over it?”

Felix, unfortunately, remembers. He remembers blood spattering across Sylvain’s face as he cut through kingdom soldier after kingdom soldier. He remembers the hollow look in Ingrid’s eyes when they learned they would be marching to Fhirdiad. He remembers the stiff, practiced way he, himself moved forward until he could run far, far away, far from his regrets and his terrors and his pain.

Some good that did.

“Forgive me for not being up to date on the country’s developments,” he grumbles. Sylvain forgives him. Instantly. 

“Let me buy you a drink,” Sylvain says. His voice is suddenly softer, a plush place to rest his iced over heart, welcoming and warm and all too likely to thaw his resolve until the words he’s written in the last several years spill out and onto his lap and into the world, unerasable and undestroyable.

“No.”

“I’ll just get two for myself, then,” he winks. Ugh.

Sylvain walks — no, he  _ saunters  _ to the bar, and Felix looks around frantically for an escape only to make eye contact with who he  _ knows _ to be an older Lysithea. Fuck, she looks smug. He narrows his eyes and she smirks and gives him a thumbs up. He groans and leans back in his seat. He’s been defeated, cornered, and he doesn’t doubt Lysithea still has the means and the motivation to blow his ass up. 

“Alright, here’s my two drinks, both for me,” Sylvain reintroduces himself. Felix pulls one of the drinks toward himself. Sylvain doesn’t stop him.

“How the hell did she tell you so fast?” Felix says after drinking half the glass in one go.

Sylvain knocks his drink back and says, “Arcane crystal.”

That doesn’t answer anything.

“Right, you probably don’t know. Lysithea and Annette have done some incredible things.” He rummages around in his pocket and pulls out a small white rock, angular and sharp and faintly glowing.

“They gave you a rock,” Felix says dryly. Sylvain barks a laugh.

“They did give me a rock,” he says wistfully, “Not just any rock! You can magically contact anyone with an arcane crystal, assuming they have their own.”

Felix stares at the rock. He has a basic understanding of magic, but he can’t possibly fathom what went into creating something like that.

“It’s nice,” Sylvain says. He sets the rock down in front of Felix. “I have my own. I want you to take that one.”

_ “Why?” _

Sylvain chuckles. “So I can check in on you. Make sure you’re alive.”

“You’ll know if I die.”

“Maybe so,” he concedes, “But I do love your voice.”

Felix rolls his eyes. Silence settles between them. Their drinks are getting lower.

“You know,” Sylvain’s tone changes to something more serious. More honest and open and Felix isn’t sure how long he can handle it. “I got your letter.”

Felix chokes.

“Letter?!” He didn’t send a letter. He destroyed every letter he ever wrote, save for the one stuffed in his pocket and covered in ink.

“Yeah,” he says knowingly, “It was a bit soggy, but it got to me in the end.”

_ “Soggy?” _

“Yep. One of my men said you dropped it in a river. You’ve always been clumsy, huh, Fe?”

Felix has never been clumsy. Sylvain has always known Felix. The smug bastard. He knows.  _ He knows.  _

He desperately tries to remember when he threw a letter into a river and realizes he’s thrown quite a few, under the assumption the ink would wash away and the paper would deteriorate, nature taking with it his confessions and apologies. 

He doesn’t have to think too hard to remember what he wrote in it. He always wrote the same thing, and he only ever wrote to Sylvain.

“Anyway, I got it,” Sylvain continues. He raises his glass in half a toast that Felix doesn’t complete. “You have a way with words, you know, for a killjoy.”

He takes the tiny, microscopic twinge of annoyance at the joking insult and runs with it before he’s consumed by humiliation. Lysithea can  _ try _ and stop him.

“I’m leaving,” he declares. Sylvain’s hand shoots out and covers his own.

“Don’t,” he pleads.

Felix’s annoyance dissipates and he doesn’t.

“Felix,” he chokes on his name. Did it always sound so foreign on Sylvain’s tongue? So much like a home he’s long forgotten? “Please. Stay.”

“Fine,” he says. 

Well, at least Sylvain’s sad smile is genuine.

“Why didn’t you send that letter?” he asks quietly.

“I didn’t send any of those letters,” Felix says with his foot in his mouth. 

“Letters?” Sylvain asks, emphasis on the  _ s. _

Felix scowls and Sylvain,  _ fucking  _ Sylvain, understands.

“What of it?” he growls.

“Come  _ home.” _

Sylvain’s hand is heavy on Felix’s. He forgot it was there. He pulls it into himself.

“I don’t know home,” he lies with his home staring straight at him.

“I do,” Sylvain whispers and Felix’s heart stops when he realizes Sylvain knows home in  _ him. _

Oh, he’s so fucked. So fucked.

“Oh,” he says. His throat is dry. His voice cracks on the single syllable. 

“Oh,” says Sylvain with his impossibly soft smile. 

Felix looks at his now empty glass. The table distorts through it, faces dance in the flickering, reflected light. He’s gonna be sick.

“I have to go,” he quietly says, his words drowned out by the scrape of his chair across the wooden floor. Sylvain stands with him.

“Please,” Sylvain’s face, his body, his voice all cry out to Felix, begging him to stay. To listen. To just go the fuck  _ home. _

“I’m going to be sick,” Felix says instead. He runs outside, Lysithea’s magic burns and pulls against his back but she doesn’t  _ really _ want to hurt him, so he keeps running. Sylvain’s steps pound behind him, chasing after him, but he’s faster than Sylvain on foot.

“Felix!” Sylvain’s voice cuts through the thick night air. When did it get so hot? “Felix, please!”

He runs into the woods where Sylvain’s horse can’t follow. His voice echoes off the trees and the roots and Felix’s own regret.

_ “I love you, Felix! Please!” _

He runs. He runs and doesn’t stop until his lungs burn and his chest is pulling itself apart, turning him inside-out with exertion. He sleeps leaning against a tree trunk in an area he doesn’t recognize in a direction he doesn’t know and dreams of a dawn that lights the way through the forest and into his home. Into the arms of his love.

He follows it only in dreams.

He realizes, days later, that he took the arcane crystal or whatever it was. It suddenly weighs down his pockets, a chain dragging behind him. He never bothered to learn how to use it. He isn’t sure he wants to. 

He keeps it.

_ Elsewhere, Sylvain reads a short letter he swiped out of Felix’s pocket while slipping the crystal in. The spilled ink renders parts of the letter unreadable, but the feeling is clear. The raw emotion punches him in the gut and leaves him doubled over, choking on his own sobs. He clings and clings and clings to the hope that they’ll meet again. Perhaps Felix will come home then. _

* * *

He stops writing letters.

He still talks to Sylvain on his travels. He talks to him in the sun, its warm golden rays teasing his skin like Sylvain’s friendly touch; he talks to him in stray dogs, their smiles eager to please like Sylvain; he talks to him in the tides he once compared him to. It’s not the same. Life goes on.

Moons after their encounter he has an accidental meeting with Ignatz. He’s traveling alone. Felix decides to accompany him.

Ignatz has a way of looking at things in a fresh light. He sees the jagged edges of the mountain and paints them as pink impressions on the canvas. He breathes light and life into desolate landscapes. 

“How do you do that?” Felix asks him.

“I just paint what I see,” Ignatz replies.

“I don’t see that,” Felix points out.

“Maybe you’re not looking hard enough,” Ignatz says.

Felix supposes he’s not.

He leaves Fódlan for the first time. Ignatz captures an Almyran market in startling, vibrant, lively color. Claude, the fucking  _ king, _ commissions Ignatz to paint his wyvern, a beautiful creature with stark white scales and sharp eyes the same color as Sylvain’s.

“So you’re a travelling artist now?” Claude asks one day.

“No.”

“Oh. Why are you travelling with Ignatz, then?”

He shrugs.

“You and Sylvian were close, what about him?”

“What  _ about _ him?” Felix growls. Claude shrugs.

“Just thought, with the war over and all, you two might finally be happy together.”

Fuck you, Claude.

Fuck you for putting his dream to voice. Fuck you for sounding off his desires, putting them in the universe where they can’t be destroyed, unlike paper and ink. 

He can’t be rid of it anymore. The words can’t be burned, can’t be drowned; they weigh on his shoulders, they weigh in the pocket of that fucking rock who’s intermittent glowing he resolutely ignores. Not for the first time, he grows homesick, and this time he can’t drown it out with the song of his sword.

“You can forgive yourself,” Claude says.

Claude’s closest friend was killed by his army.

“Can I?”

“Yeah, you can.”

He reaches for the validation. He reaches for the things he wants that he holds close to his chest. He’s always been selfish, after all.

When they return to Fódlan Felix and Ignatz are, oddly enough, accompanied by Claude and his retinue. Claude thinks Edelgard might need some art around her castle. Felix can’t stomach the thought of seeing Her. They part ways, Ignatz and Claude travelling west and Felix travelling north.

_ Elsewhere, days later, Sylvain receives news that Felix had been travelling with the two men standing in front of him for quite some time. He sobs in relief that Felix is alive, and he sobs in sorrow that he so narrowly missed him. He learns Felix is travelling north. When border meetings have finished and treaties have been signed he travels back to Gautier in record time. Felix isn’t there. _

* * *

Felix stands in front of the river he where he dropped his letter almost a year ago, just out of sight of the Gautier estate, likely within sight of Sylvain’s men. He doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t even have half baked excuses. 

Sylvain never did show him how to use that stupid rock.

He looks up; the overcast sky sprinkles a light dusting of snow onto his hair and his shoulders. It’s warm enough to snow. He wonders if Sylvain’s spirit warms even the sky.

“Felix.”

He doesn’t respond. Footsteps crunch through the snow and ice, getting closer and closer until they stop next to him.

“Felix.”

Felix tilts his head to look at Sylvain out of the corner of his eye; he looks disbelieving, his eyes wide and his lips parted. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. Maybe he has.

“Hey,” he says.

“You’re here.” His voice is barely a breath.

“Yeah,” Felix says. He was never much for the spoken word.

“Why?”

Felix huffs out a laugh. “I heard you were in the area,” he says, “Wanted to catch up. See how you’re doing.”

Sylvain’s smile is small, it’s touched by tears, but it’s there and it’s because of  _ Felix. _

“The area, huh?” he chuckles, “I live here. My house is right there.”

“Yeah, well, my source is pretty reliable.”

His laughter sounds like gemstones against slate, valuable and careless, precious and treasured. 

“Are you leaving me another letter?”

Felix glares. “I haven’t written a letter in moons.”

Sylvain pulls a piece of paper from his pocket, half covered in ink. Felix groans.

“I carry it with me,” he says, softly like the falling snow. Felix recalls the softness in his arms and in his hair. “The other one, uh, has its own home. It didn’t exactly arrive in good condition.”

Felix scoffs. “Can’t even take care of the gifts I give you.”

Sylvain blinks once, twice, and then roars with laughter, interrupting the landscape, clutching his sides and bent double. Felix tries to hold back his own laughter and fails. The two of them collapse side by side on the riverbank like children, laughing until tears run down their faces and freeze until finally —

“I’m gonna piss my pants,” Sylvain wheezes romantically.

“That’s disgusting,” Felix chokes out.

_ “You’re _ disgusting!”

“What are you, five?”

Sylvain, who has mostly calmed down now, raises an eyebrow. “No, baby, I’m a  _ ten.” _

Felix throws a handful of snow at his face. He catches it with said face.

He leans back on his hands and regards Sylvain wiping snow out of his eyes with a stupid grin. So much has changed in the last, what, thirteen years? Sylvain’s crow’s feet and laugh lines that he admired all those moons ago really do a lot for him. He’s softer now, more fat over his muscle. He looks healthy. He looks  _ good. _ Felix doesn’t really know what he looks like after so many years.

“You look good,” he says quietly. Sylvain blinks up at him.

“Who, me?” he laughs, “You should see yourself!”

Felix rolls his eyes.

“I swear, your whole  _ I don’t make facial expressions _ method has done wonders for wrinkle prevention.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Maybe you could stay here and teach me?”

Felix is familiar with Sylvain’s grin. He’s familiar with Sylvain’s many grins; his lying grin, his laughing grin, his flirting grin, his  _ I lost but might as well grin anyway _ grin. Felix knows this grin.

It’s his shit-eating,  _ I won _ grin.

“We’ll see,” Felix says impassively.

“We will, won’t we?”

Sylvain rests a hand over Felix’s and they watch the river flowing by, just like the last time Felix was here, just like time and just like life, continuing on regardless of presence, of regrets, of ghosts and gravestones.

* * *

_ After the war’s end, skirmishes continued to break out across Fódlan. Learning that there were still places where he could fight, Felix abandoned his noble title and chose to make a living with his sword. A decade later, he reunited briefly with Sylvain, who had need of his services as Margrave Gautier. Felix departed as soon as the job was finished. He returned, however, for unknown reasons soon after. It is said that, in their later years, they became so close that they passed away on the same day, as if conceding that one could not live without the other. _

**Author's Note:**

> do you ever get a passage stuck in your head in the shower, rush to write it down on your phone, and write half a fic on the bathroom floor before you realize maybe you could be somewhere a little more comfortable? yeah me neither
> 
> [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/punchyfakegamer)


End file.
